10 Facts About Ron O'Neal

Ron O'Neal grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, to parents Eunice and Ernest O'Neal, a former jazz musician who earned his living as a factory worker.

Ron O'Neal graduated from Glenville High School and attended Ohio State University, where he became interested in acting after seeing the play Finian's Rainbow.

Ron O'Neal joined the Karamu House company in Cleveland, Ohio, working with the oldest African-American theatre company in the United States from 1957 until 1964, during which period he appeared in plays such as Kiss Me, Kate, A Streetcar Named Desire and A Raisin in the Sun, while working as a housepainter to earn his living.

Ron O'Neal appeared in Shakespeare plays during the 1970s, including Othello, Macbeth and The Taming of the Shrew.

Ron O'Neal had a number of television guest appearances, frequently playing detective roles.

Ron O'Neal played a recurring role as police detective, Isadore Smalls, in the TV series The Equalizer, which ran for three seasons in the mid-1980s and starred British actor, Edward Woodward.

Ron O'Neal played the primary antagonist, the Cuban Colonel Ernesto Bella, in 1984's Red Dawn.

In 1988, Ron O'Neal had a recurring role as Mercer Gilbert on the popular NBC television sitcom A Different World, playing the wealthy father of the spoiled southern belle Whitley Gilbert.

Ron O'Neal was first married to actress Carol Tillery Banks, from November 1973 until 1980, and then to Audrey Pool, from 1993 until his death in 2004.

Ron O'Neal died in Los Angeles on January 14,2004, after a four-year battle with pancreatic cancer, on the same day Super Fly was released on DVD in the United States.